About six months ago my small bookkeeping business expanded to take on a part time assistant to help with admin and marketing which was a huge success. It was lovely to have a member of staff to talk things through with and the system we developed meant her work really saved me a lot of time (mainly a few hours a week swearing at my printer).
I have now been able to offer a job to a lady who is also one of our clients. She is having a difficult time as the business she runs with her husband depends on large public events...so the pandemic has been a nightmare for them. It was great to be able to offer her some work and have some help processing invoices from suppliers. It is also allowing me to develop a few new sections in my training manual which is under development.
Based on this experience I would like to share my 3 tips for taking on new employees ;
1. Make sure you have a well defined role with a training procedure in place so that they feel supported in their new role.
2. Don’t feel that you have to have a full time employee, working with these two part time ladies has been a relief to me even though I am not ready for a full time member of staff.
3. You can have staff even if you are working from home – I couldn’t work out how to deal with training or interviewing without renting an office but here we are, a team of 3.
